"These are crazy times.

In Russia, they have always been
crazy times."

"In fact, the disposal of vast numbers
of human beings is just about
the only dynamic the country has ever known."

– Last Rights, Tim Sebastian, 1993.

Boreholes are the Future.

(Not to mention perpetually-burning
coal-seam fires.)

Homo-eroticism

offers the opportunity
for more art than urge
– simultaneously.

The food industry, a promotional photo.

So we are fed
into the feeder.
Human history's
Follow the leader.

Toadpoles

 

photo by Shane Gross

Follow your Weleda

 
Is anyone surprised ?  Most fashion and cosmetics
companies have fascistic leanings: Chanel, L'Oréal,
Belenciaga, Vuitton, Dior, Boss and others.
After all, they sell to the rich.

War, Religion.

A mosque in Gaza.

Americans

are insanely anti-intellectual
except when intellect produces
dumb domination ever more effectual.

And so it goes.

 

On Kafka.

I see no mystery in The Trial.
Joseph K's crime was to be human.

Men who know too much.

Pelicot said of Dogan’s appeal: 

"I think it is indecent."

The trial continues.

Gisèle Pelicot, a brave woman known too much,
should replace Joan of Arc
in the French psyche.

But no way is it likely.

Yours, Martin.

Sending postcards is so passé,
old hat, vieux-jeu...

So I was thrilled to get a card today
out of the blue, so to say,

with pictures of Scottish Lochs on one side,
and on the other this plaintive message
accompanying an unfranked stamp:

I’ve mainly spent the past few weeks
looking joylessly at my knees
as I hiked [presumably on a bike,
so not a tramp]]
through the Highlands
which [rugged surfeit]
was interrupted by the occasional
Trail Friend and Stunning View.
It could almost have been worth it!

Sickening.

This is not why
I read The Guardian
every day.

Outrageous.

You might surf for hours under the heading
'Dejeuner sur l'herbe with naked men'

but, amongst the hackneyed
reproductions of the paintings
by Manet and Monet,
and the film of that name by Jean Renoir,
a Renault advertisement by Doisneau
and variations, rude and (by Picasso) crude
jokes upon the theme (Dalí didn't dare)

you may find only these with even one male nude. 

Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream ?

On the planet of the blind
Artificial Intelligence
is King.

After rare rain

in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

 photo by Lucas Aguayo

 

That tedious cliché 'The West'

 
does not necessarily include the USA,
but now must include Ukraine, the Baltics and the Balkans.

Martyrdom Denied.

If only I could have found a Cause
worth blowing myself up for
I would have joined it years ago. 

More for contumely than applause.

"The right side of History."

Excuse me,
but there is neither right side
nor bright side of history.
It is all wrong.

And there is no "redemption", either.

A Question,

 

Eat your hearts out, Burke and Hare.*

It's no surprise that the world's chief
supplier and consumer of pornography
is the world's chief supplier and consumer
of cadavers (corpses) and body-parts.

I've willed my desiccated body
to Toulouse University.
For its quick transport I actually paid.
I wouldn't care what anyone would do
to or with my body**, from anatomy-instruction
all the ways to necrophilia, but I am outraged
quite simply (as always) by the trade.

* https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize

** After all, like a good primate,
I've eaten my deep-fried psoriatic skin-flakes,
nose- and ear-pickings, drunk my urine,
once even tried a tiny piecelet of my shit...

In Arcadia

 Egos are quite small.

Chronic Fatigue and Post-covid Syndrome.

 I used to have some symptoms of the one
(especially continual fatigue and depression)
with bouts of energetic ataraxia;

now I have symptoms of the other.
Preparing for bed is quite a bother. 

Gastric revolt, sometimes brain fog so bad
I have had to work out how to turn on the kettle
and turn off the laptop; I'm almost always cold;
the type of tiredness that makes me hope
I can die quickly, quietly from fatigue.
Currently I need to rest half-way
as I pull myself up the stairs,
and have difficulty getting out of the car
and up the 50-metre slope to it.
Yet I can drive. 

Listening to the radio,
updating websites and composing blogs
make me feel a little more alive.

Last week I even managed to saw two logs,
but I simply don't have the energy
to trot out my symptoms my doctor
or to become a victim of the Wellness Industry.

My latest bargain second-hand buy
folds and fits in the front well of the car.
I don't think I'll use the plastic tray.

Our heroes

reflect our views on life.
My first hero was Theseus
because (for some deep, impenetrable reason)
I was fascinated by his encounter with Procrustes. 
Then (impenetrably) I loved the Minotaur.

For years I had no hero (hated patriarchs)
until I discovered van Gogh (and painting),
and, subsequently, Rosa Parks.

Now this senescent,
quietist seeker, finder of ataraxy,
considers Volodomyr Zelenskyy*
a hero, though that could be because
the former joker is so admirably sexy.

*who, in the words of Winston Churchill, had greatness thrust upon him.

Re-incarnation

might be in the past.

If Kali forbid! I were to be
reborn I would like to return
as a sterile spermatozoon
of a happy, hairy man.

The Work Ethic

is based on the assertion
that idle dreaming
leads to subversion.

Unintentional haiku

by Frankie Boyle (Meantime 2022, page 130)

Moon, the cloudy white
eye of a disinterested
universe.

The sheer shallowness

of Western culture revealed itself i
n the vapid, culturally-restricted
and almost totalitarian
"counter-culture" which it accommodated

and I observed as an anti-counter-cultural 
drop-out.

“Every sort of contradiction can be found in me,”

 - Michel de Montaigne.

Why is the Catholic Church

so 'exercised' about sex,
when its Saviour was
probably asexual ?

 

Dear Mr Trump,

 "Most of the world's problems
come from the fact that
stupid people talk louder."

- Frankie Boyle, Meantime (2022)

Throttling the world.

'Bayer (Germany) and Corteva (US)
control 80 per cent of patents
for genetically modified seeds.'

What do they care
about people's actual needs ?

https://aeon.co/essays/

My new friend

is having a bad hair day.

Polka-dot Batfish by Matthew Sullivan

 

Funeral music, British humour.

The most popular music
for British funerals
is Eric Idle's 
Always look on the bright side of life.

When all's said and done, say no more.

By definition

prophets are unsubtle
except when being gnomic.
Their followers interpret them
subtly, or selectively,
which leads to schism
and rank hypocrisy.
Subtle prophets
are philosophers.

 

Diogenes might have said

that he'd rather share a bed
with a dog than a human.
I would probably have agreed,
without making a choice
between man or woman,
between lice and fleas.

Lifestyle.

We consumers
should not be blamed
for what we consume,
but only for consuming.

Being sociable

is not the same as
being addicted to social grooming.

Darkly-amusing juxtaposition.

You know there is something wrong

with a diplomatic event
when it begins with a photo
of the guest of honour
standing next to a child sex trafficker
being projected on to Windsor Castle.

Fact and Fiction

In fiction you know
what people are thinking.
In fact, you do not.

Diogenes said

(and Schopenhauer agreed)
that any immortality would be hell.

Diogenes in Dijon.

 

A waking thought.

There have been

in Russo-Greek Christian 'Orthodoxy'

self-styled, often uncouth

Fools for Christ.

But none like Diogenes

who has been described as

Fools for Truth.

Virtual Connections.

I see
another one
has "ghosted" me
which happens
quite regularly
when I encounter
members of the
actual bourgeoisie.

Dressing up

in England.

"Jack-in-the-Green"

The Putin of the World Wide Web

Worth more than a Himalaya of sugar.

Mark Zuckerberg

The missing comma.

 A country that presents itself falsely is not to be trusted.
(Well, no country, except perhaps San Marino can be trusted)

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
is a masquerade, a false representation
because the Kingdom of Ireland
(of which the present Northern Ireland
is a fragment) ceased to exist in 1800.

In 1922 most of Ireland bloodily seceded from the United Kingdom, leaving an entity, curiously named Northern Ireland
and not North Ireland (like, say, North Korea, North Macedonia,
or South Sudan) officially, practically, legislatively
closer to the UK than the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands
(which are a lordship and dependencies respectively)
but a separate entity which will eventually secede.  

So the UK's proper title should contain a comma,
or, better, a dash:
the United Kingdom of Great Britain - and Northern Ireland
trailing in its abominable, royal footsteps.

The Oddity of [my] Memory

I have been re-reading Peter Carey's
splendid satire Oscar and Lucinda
which I first read in 1989 or 1990. 
I remembered the cover, the title
and my enjoyment, but forgot
every ferocious iota of the plot.

If, however, the book had been called
The Glass Church
I'm pretty sure my memory would not
have left me in the lurch.

Kargah e hasti.

The poet-philosopher
Jalaludin Rumi
suggested that
I should think of Being
as Workshop.

But, having been
a fatherless technophobe,
workshops frightened me

and I am not a fan of work
or indeed employment
that is not enjoyment.

For most people
life is (at least) a tussle, 
but for me it's more
of an astrophysical puzzle.

On my 84th birthday.

Time out of mind
Time out of mud
Mind out of blood
Yet mud is so kind